I do care, and I try to only get hardware that will allow me to tweak it.

But normal people couldn't care less, and this is where all these companies win.

They get free software as a means to lower their development costs, not because they share any kind of ideals with the open source community.

Using the mobile phone manufactures as an example, if you would be able to upgrade the installed OS, the technical support costs would increase and people would not buy new phones to get the new OS version.

They get free software as a means to lower their development costs, not because they share any kind of ideals with the open source community.

This is absolutely not true. Free Software doesn't necessarily lower the development costs, esp. when you are doing all the development from your own budget (as Nokia is doing with Qt, for example).

Doing free software has the promise of being ubiquitous, and palatable to wide mass of developers (because free software ensures a company can't screw you over if/when you decide to "buy in" on a given technology). Both Google and Nokia get this, and it's pretty much compatible with ideals of the open source community to me.